Author: derek51b1dbe657

The RadioLabour episode that carried this report can be found at:  https://rabble.ca/podcast/bill-c-39-the-whole-world-is-watching/

Top stories on our Canadian French- and English-language pages this week were a joint statement from the CLC and the ETUC on the Canada-EU talks on associate membership or whatever it is being called this week, CUPE’s decision to make the coming Monday the strike deadline for support staff in Nove Scotia’s schools, and the labour movement’s reaction to BC’s election results.

Other stories our volunteers found and posted included advance notice of the Labour Arts Awards in Toronto, the CLC’s call for an end to arms exports to Israel, and the start of the process leading to a strike vote by 120,000 PSAC members in the federal public service.

This week’s international story of note came to us from the USA and it was the sad news that legendary farmworkers organizer Dolores Huerta has died, age 96.  Her achievements and her influence as a Latina workers advocate and union leader would take too long to even just summarize here.  Follow the link on our main page to a lengthy obituary in The Guardian to get a sense of her accomplishments.

Over on LabourStart’s Working Women pages stories from Canada included alarm bells being run by CUPE about the state of the early childhood education workforce as CUPE members marked, celebrated is not the word, ECE Workers Day on a picket line in Toronto after they were locked-out, and NUPGE’s announcement of the start of the second-ever national domestic violence at work.

Among the Canadian items appearing on our health and safety page and newswire this week were the death of a Toronto traffic agent, a member of CUPE local 79, increased workplace violence at a psych hospital in Quebec after the elimination of conflict-reduction worker positions, and the ongoing push by the BCGEU to have wildland firefighters classified as just that: firefighters instead of forestry workers, in part because of the risks they face.

LabourStart’s Photo of the Week, which you can catch on our main page until Monday, is from Portugal where on 17 October the CGTP organized a national one-day warning strike by public sector workers. The issue is a familiar one these days:  Wages that are not keeping pace with increasing costs.

The labour movement’s history is what our current struggles are built on and this week we marked the anniversaries of these events:

This week in 1917  saw the birth of labour activist Kent Rowley, in Montreal. He went on to become Canadian director of the United Textile Workers of America in the 1940s and a founder of the Confederation of Canadian Unions in 1968.

In 1900 some 250 soldiers were called out by the mayor of Valleyfield, Québec when striking workers blocked access to the Montreal Cotton Company mill. The soldiers opened fire and more than a dozen workers are wounded.

This week in 1997 saw more than 125,000 Ontario teachers walk out to protest the province’s plans to cut school budgets and centralize control over education. The two-week protest affected two million students and is the largest teachers’ strike in North American history.

In 1971 a protest against a lockout at the daily newspaper La Presse in Montreal ends in a street battle between thousands of workers and police. After tear gas was used, student activist Michele Gauthier, an expectant mother, died of suffocation.

And, last but not least, in 1999 the Public Service Alliance of Canada won a long-running battle with the federal government over pay equity for workers in the public service.

This is Derek Blackadder from LabourStart reporting for RadioLabour.

The RadioLabour episode that carried this report can be found at:  https://rabble.ca/podcast/protecting-the-right-to-strike-in-canada/

Top stories on our Canadian French- and English-language pages this week included a rally by hundreds of Registered Nurses Union members at the civic centre in Corner Brook.  The rally was their response to the city’s decision to lockout the CUPE members who normally work there.  The RNU had planned its annual meeting for the civic centre.

Speaking as the son of a nurses’ union steward, I have some advice for the City:  End the lockout.  You don’t want to mess with the nurses.  They stick needles into people for a living.

Other stories our volunteers found and posted were about the bill C-39 presentations made by a number of unions to the Commons committee reviewing the latest attack on the right to strike, calls from BC unions for the province’s next government to build future ferries in British Columbia, not China, and, perhaps bizarrely, one of the best analyses of C-39 that I have read, from Norway, in Norwegian.

My favourite item among our Canadian stories was from the Steelworkers detailing the international solidarity that is deepening the relationship between unions in Canada, the US, and Mexico.

This week’s international story of note came from Brazil, where a number of unions, led by the bank workers, are challenging Meta’s attempt to undermine Lula’s re-election campaign.  Lula, a former metalworkers union president, has been campaigning against not just the far-right candidate but the Trump administration and its tech bro allies.

The Brazilian labour movement supports Lula and as a result many unions there have lost access to their social media accounts.

Over on LabourStart’s Working Women pages stories from Canada included a report from CUPE’s first-ever Saskatchewan women’s conference.

Among the Canadian items appearing on our health and safety page and newswire this week were a CUPE piece detailing the impact of over-work on healthcare workers in Newfoundland and Labrador and what the MGEU calls, rightly, a “jaw-dropping” increase in violent attacks on Winnipeg education workers.

LabourStart’s Photo of the Week, which you can catch on our main page until Monday, is from Mozambique, where two decades of mobilization and advocacy by the National Union of Domestic Workers paid off this month as the national government enacted legal protections for domestic workers in line with ILO Convention No. 189.

The labour movement’s history is what our current struggles are built on and this week we marked the anniversaries of these events:

This week in 1935 farm labourer Nicholas Schaack, 51, died in hospital following head injuries received on Market Square in Regina on Dominion Day, when the Royal Canadian Mounted Police brought the On to Ottawa Trek of unemployed workers to a violent end.

This week in 1958 in Springhill, Nova Scotia, 75 men were killed in a mine disaster. A group of twelve miners were rescued on 30 October and a final group of seven were located and brought to the surface on 1 November.

This week in 1996, General Motors tried to break a Canadian Autoworkers strike by removing equipment, union members then occupied the company’s Oshawa plants.

A personal favourite, in part because it is so little-studied by labour historians, is the creation, in 1972, by feminists in Vancouver, of the SORWUC – the Service, Office and Retail Workers’ Union of Canada. They aimed to represent workers in marginalised, low-paying, largely female-dominated sectors that were not priorities for established unions.

LabourStart is also a campaigning website and we currently have two active online solidarity actions.  One pushing the Chinese and Hong Kong governments to release Lee Cheuk-yan, the imprisoned General-Secretary of the HKCTU, the other in solidarity with six jailed journalist union members in Egypt.

Look for the prominent link on our main page and click through.  Protest and solidarity messages are prepped and waiting for you.  It’ll take just seconds to add your voice to those of thousands of trade unionists around the world who have already taken action.

This is Derek Blackadder from LabourStart reporting for RadioLabour.

The RadioLabour episode that carried this report can be found at:  https://rabble.ca/podcast/unions-rally-against-mark-carney-and-bill-c-39/

Top stories on our Canadian French- and English-language pages this week included the coast-to-coast demos in opposition to bill C-39 and its undermining of the right to strike, what Alberta’s labour movement is doing in the last days of the referendum campaign in that province, and retrospective pieces in the mainstream media about the largest strike in Canadian history.  Never heard of it?  No idea what I’m talking about?  Keep listening

Other stories our volunteers found and posted were about the library strike in Thunder Bay that started when the employer left the table just hours from the strike deadline to go to another meeting, the CFNU ongoing campaign to force the federal government to enforce the Canada Health Act and stop the rush to private, for-profit healthcare, and the launch of yet another campaign by public sector workers who are facing increasing levels of workplace violence.  This time it’s the CSQ taking the lead.  And, also from Quebec, came coverage of Unifor’s support for a community effort to buy an about-to-close paper products plant that might just save an entire town from disappearing.

This week’s international story of note came from Ireland, where 300,000 public service workers held a one-day strike on Wednesday.  The walkout is just the first of weekly warning strikes that will lead either to an acceptable settlement or an open-ended general strike later this year.

Over on LabourStart’s Working Women pages stories from Canada included a peek at the PSAC’s brand-new LEAD+ programme. Intended for emerging local union leaders, participants explored how PSAC works and developed skills on how to effectively advocate and organize.  They exchanged perspectives, connected with one another, and reflected on barriers to participation and leadership. And they considered how identities and lived experiences could help build a union where everyone has a voice.

Among the Canadian items appearing on our health and safety page and newswire this week were any number of bad news stories with the news that Manitoba set a new record for workplace injuries for the third year in a row being at the top, or bottom, of that list.

LabourStart’s Photo of the Week, which you can catch on our main page until Monday, is from Portugal where CGTP members were a large proportion of the thousands who marched through Lisbon on 10 October to demand peace in the Middle East and in solidarity with the Palestinian people.

The labour movement’s history is what our current struggles are built on and this week we marked the anniversaries of these events:

This week in 1973 the Ontario Nurses Association was founded during an all-day meeting of 85 nurses’ associations.

In 1944 the Trades and Labour Congress of Canada chartered Federal Labour Union 180 at Vancouver General Hospital. This is the beginning of the Hospital Employees’ Union of British Columbia, now the province’s largest health care union and a Division of CUPE.

1976 saw Air Traffic Control Assistants who were members of the Public Service Alliance of Canada start a one-week country-wide wildcat strike over work classification.

Also in 1976 the CLC organized Canada’s first country-wide general strike, when one million workers join a Day of Protest against the federal government’s wage controls policy.  That was fun.  We should do it again sometime.  Like mebbe now.

And, finally, in 1963 more than 200 nurses started an illegal strike at the Hôpital Sainte-Justine in Montréal. They sought an end to overwork and recognition of their role in the health system. The resulting thirty-day strike achieved a settlement that encouraged unionization, the best kind of settlement.

This is Derek Blackadder from LabourStart reporting for Radio

The RadioLabour episode that carried this report can be found at:  https://rabble.ca/podcast/creating-indigenous-ai/

Top stories on our Canadian French- and English-language pages this week included the movement’s reactions to the vile threatening display by white suprematists near Kamloops.

I dunno what to say about this except that it made me proud to see the speed and vigor with which unions responded.  I know what to say about the racist display itself but that would be both off-topic and not fit to be heard by any children who might be listening.

Media coverage of the ITUC’s, that’s the International Trade Union Confederation, reaction to the proposed restriction on the right to strike in federally-regulated workplaces that the Grits are pitching was a big one as well.   It’s a bit odd to see the extent to which the ITUC’s, and the global union federations, get respect from the mainstream media in ways the domestic movement doesn’t.

And we carried mebbe 200 items from Canadian unions on the same nasty subject.

Hope you’re all paying attention, even if you aren’t in a workplace to which the Canada Labour Code applies, cause this is an idea that is soon going to replicated by the provinces.  Perhaps not in BC and Manitoba, but the rest for sure, with Alberta likely leading the charge.

Other stories our volunteers found and posted were about the 100 days-long strike at the Bank of Canada, signs that CUPE may be joining ONA, that’s the Ontario Nurses Association, in challenging the denial of healthcare workers right to strike, and how the Fishers, Food and Allied Workers in NL is reacting to the possible creation of a snow crab fishery based on the French islands of St. Pierre and Miquelon.

My favourite item among our Canadian stories was a heart-warming piece from Unifor about the solidarity being extended to workers on the line in Ontario.

This week’s international story of note, I can’t really call it my favourite, came from Honduras where employers have been handed a carte blanche to attack the labour movement.  Since the most recent election, which saw a right-wing President and his supporters elected, over 500 union leaders have been sacked and blacklisted and violence is increasingly a response to any organizing.  

Over on LabourStart’s Working Women pages stories from Canada included coverage of IAM Union’s women and young workers conference.  My favourite though is the coverage and reviews of “Sisters of 78”, the play now on at Theatre Aquarius in Hamilton.  Here’s hoping the company takes it on the road.  Specifically, to Cobourg Ontario.

Among the Canadian items appearing on our health and safety page and newswire this week were the welcome if tardy news that the BC construction crane industry will be receiving more attention over ongoing safety problems, frightening stats about the violence faced by healthcare workers in Alberta, the same experienced by library workers in Ontario and by teachers in Nova Scotia.

Pop over to our French-language version of the health and safety page and you’ll see more stories about attacks on public-facing workers in schools, retail and government services by members of the public in Quebec who are frustrated by the effects of cuts to services, or affected by the lack of mental health supports, or who just think that a gas station attendant is somehow more responsible for rising fuel prices than is Trump and his war.

But the big one was the coverage we saw of the report on the myriad ways in which Cargill workers in Alberta were hung out to dry by their employer and by the provincial government during the worst of COVID.

LabourStart’s Photo of the Week, which you can catch on our main page until Monday, is from Germany where 175,000 IG Metall members were out on the streets on 21 September in a show of defiance against concession demands by the major German vehicle manufacturers.

Podcast-wise this week Eric Lee interviewed Christopher Mung about the current situation in Hong Kong following the sentencing of union leader Lee Cheuk-yan.  Christopher is the executive director of the Hong Kong Labour Rights Monitor and was previously chief executive of the Hong Kong Confederation of Trade Unions.  He spoke about the attempts by the state to crush the once-vibrant trade union movement in Hong Kong, the ongoing resistance by workers, and the international campaign demanding the release of Lee Cheuk-yan.

The labour movement’s history is what our current struggles are built on and this week we marked the anniversaries of these events:

This week in 1900 250 soldiers were called out by the mayor of Valleyfield, Québec when striking workers block access to the Montreal Cotton Company mill. The soldiers opened fire and more than a dozen workers are wounded.

Legendary labour activist Kent Rowley, was born in Montreal this week in 1917. He became Canadian director of the United Textile Workers of America in the 1940s and a founder of the Confederation of Canadian Unions in 1968.

In 1997 more than 125,000 Ontario teachers walked out to protest the province’s plans to cut school budgets and centralize control over education. The two-week protest affected two million students and is still the largest teachers’ strike in North American history.

And, finally, in 1971 a protest against a lockout at the daily La Presse in Montreal ended in a street battle between thousands of workers and police. When tear gas was used, student activist Michele Gauthier, an expectant mother, dies of suffocation.

LabourStart is also a campaigning website and we currently have XXX active online solidarity actions.  The most recent to launch is a protest and solidarity campaign on behalf of Lee Cheuk-yan.  Listen to our most recent podcast for the whys and the wherefores.  Or don’t.  But either way click through from our main page.  A solidarity message is prepped and waiting for you.  It’ll take just seconds to add your voice to those of thousands of trade unionists around the world who have already taken action.

This is Derek Blackadder from LabourStart reporting for RadioLabour.

The RadioLabour episode that carried this report can be found at:  https://rabble.ca/podcast/extendicare-workers-fight-for-fair-contract-with-long-term-care-provider/

Top stories on our Canadian French- and English-language pages this week included, no surprise, the proposed changes to the Canada Labour Code that would give the federal Minister of Labour, not that the current government actually thinks enough of us to have one, the power to end strikes for pretty much any reason at all.

Like all bad ideas, this one will spread fast.  Look for provinces to bring forward their own versions of the Liberal bill, using the same excuse:  we need to crush workers and their unions to become prosperous.  Cause, you know, somebody has to pay and it can’t be the rich and employers.

Other stories our volunteers found and posted were about more pleasant labour news. Top of my list and my favourite story of the week was a piece from the Spectator. 

“Sisters of ‘78” is a play that opened this week in Hamilton ON that brings the historic 163-day Fleck strike to the stage and back to life.  The Fleck workers, 80 women, faced down up to 536 cops and countless scabs on their picket lines.  And they won.  Not just for themselves but for all Ontario workers.  Just one example:  the Rand Formula was incorporated into the Ontario Labour Relations Act as a direct result of the Fleck workers struggle.

They did it back then; we can do it now.

Resisting the urge to link the Fleck strike to what’s coming from our federal and soon provincial governments, here’s this  week’s international story of note.  

This week 25 political prisoners, many of them imprisoned for their trade union work, were released by the government of Belarus.  Hundreds more remain in jail.  You can read more about the how’s, why’s and where’s in the piece we’re carrying from global union federation IndustriALL.

Over on LabourStart’s Working Women pages stories from Canada included a piece from the CLC marking Gender Equality Week, a report from the IAM’s international women’s conference in Chicago, and some early and very positive reviews of Sisters of 78. 

Among the Canadian items appearing on our health and safety page and newswire this week were the PSAC’s reaction to the death of a member in Montreal this week and its efforts in bargaining mental health supports with Parks Canada.

LabourStart’s Photo of the Week, which you can catch on our main page until Monday, is from New Zealand where 10,000 public service workers across that country walked off the job in a one-day warning strike on 9 September.  In a country that size, that’s a major show of strength in support of the union’s bargaining position.

The labour movement’s history is what our current struggles are built on and this week we marked the anniversaries of these events:

This week in 1980 some 10,000 federal clerical and regulatory workers walked off the job – 9 days before being in a legal strike position. Women made up 76% of the bargaining unit, and 57% were under the age of 35.

In 1873 The Canadian Labour Union was founded in Toronto. This first attempt to organize a Canadian labour central found limited support, mainly from skilled workers in Ontario.

And today we wish a happy birthday to the Canadian Union of Public Employees, now Canada’s largest union.  It was founded on this date in 1963 in Winnipeg through a merger of two earlier organizations.

And in 1995 Canadian unions supporting the Liverpool Dockers Solidarity Campaign participated in national actions using the internet. This is believed to be the first time the net was used to organize an international labour solidarity action.

LabourStart is also a campaigning website and we currently have three active online solidarity actions, one each in solidarity with workers in Hong Kong, Turkiye and in Taiwan.  Sadly, the Hong Kong and Turkish campaigns both involve workers jailed for their union work.  In other words, for doing the kind of things you and I likely do almost every day.

Look for the prominent link on our main page and click through.  Protest and solidarity messages are prepped and waiting for you.  It’ll take just seconds to add your voice to those of thousands of trade unionists around the world who have already taken action. This is Derek Blackadder from LabourStart reporting for RadioLabour.

The RadioLabour episode that carried this report can be found at:  https://rabble.ca/podcast/brampton-auto-plant-the-first-to-close/

Top stories on our Canadian French- and English-language pages this week included lots about tariffs and the impact the trade war is already having on Canadian workers, what our governments are not doing to cushion the blows.

On the weirdly-fascinating side of things this week is a lovely inside look at the ‘union avoidance’ campaign that Amazon used against Unifor and the workers at its facility in BC, thanks to Jacobin.

You know the warehouse I’m talking about?  The one where the workers recently won a union in part because of exactly the tactics that the company’s own documents spell out in some detail.

If the subject grabs you, see if your local public library has a copy of Marty Levitt’s memoir ‘Confessions of a Union Buster’.  Leavitt was a hugely, massively successful union buster in the US who, after he got sober with some assistance from a twelve-step programme, made amends for his behaviour when drinking by exposing the ‘union avoidance industry’ down there.  I read it when working as an organizer and it was fascinating and useful.

From what I can see while some of the delivery methods are new, like social media, the fundamentals of union busting remain pretty much the same.

One other Amazon story made our site this week.  That was the news that, facing organizing pressure from several unions including Unifor, the company this week raised wages by a loonie an hour.

Other stories our volunteers found and posted were about the spectacular, in terms of participation as well as outcome, strike vote by CUPE healthcare members in Saskatchewan, as well as a really interesting piece from Justice for Truck Drivers about their campaign to be converted from independent contractors to employees.

Justice for Truckers is just the most recent example of workers forming what is in effect a union, despite being denied access to the processes and protections of labour legislation.  

This week’s international story of note came from Bangladesh and Pakistan by way of stock markets around the world.  

Following the 2013 Rana Plaza mass industrial murder in which 1134 Bangladeshi garment workers died, two global unions, IndustriALL and UNI, negoitiated the so-called International Accord.  The Accord is meant to improve health and safety by pushing the global brands that contract with factories across Bangladesh and Pakistan to require a set of minimum standards.  When it came into effect 43 brands and retail chains signed-on.

This week the number of garment brands and retailers that have signed the Accord reached 300. The legally binding agreement on worker health and safety across textile and garment factories now covers over 3.4 million workers across 2,000 factories in Bangladesh and Pakistan.

Over on LabourStart’s Working Women pages stories from Canada included… nothing.  We didn’t pick up a single story from Canada. 

If you see a union or union-friendly news item out there, especially one about women workers, do send it along.  Apparently we could use some extra help.

Among the Canadian items appearing on our health and safety page and newswire this week were a piece from PSAC about mental health challenges for Parks Canada workers and an impressive but straightforward account of the efforts being made by the Immigrant Workers Centre in Montreal to empower non-union, often domestic workers, to take on their health and safety concerns.

LabourStart’s Photo of the Week, which you can catch on our main page until Monday, came to us from Uruguay where the Workers’ and Employees’ Union of Norteña (SOEN), is fighting to safeguard jobs and secure the future of AB InBev’s Cympay malting plant. The company is demanding job cuts in exchange for reopening the facility which has been closed since March. AB InBev is the world’s largest brewer and the company behind some of the world’s best-known beer brands, including Budweiser, Corona, Stella Artois, and Beck’s.

Podcast-wise we’ve recently posted a short, ten minutes or so, interviews with Mark Bergfeld, Director of Property Services at UNI Europa. 

Our Editor, Eric Lee, chatted with Mark about the two groups of workers represented by UNI Europa’s Property Services department — security guards and cleaners.  Mark explains some of the issues that these workers face and the challenge of organising them into unions.

Worth listening to just for the bit where, when asked about union density in these sectors, Mark threw out the astounding statistic that in Belgium, over 80% of these workers are unionised.  But in other countries, the numbers are much lower.  Canada, sadly, ain’t Belgium or even close to it.

The labour movement’s history is what our current struggles are built on and this week we marked the anniversaries of these events:

This week in 1945 in Windsor, Ontario, the United Auto Workers began their historic strike against the Ford Motor Company. It lasts for 99 days and leads to the Rand Formula for union security.

In 1933 a general strike began in the factories in Stratford, Ontario and spreads across the city. Troops and armoured cars were called out.

 Speaking of troops being used to break strikes, in 1912 Vancouver Island coal miners begin what becomes a two-year strike for workplace safety and union recognition. To defeat the miners’ union, the companies bring in strikebreakers and the province calls out the militia.

On a happier note, in 1913 the New Brunswick Federation of Labour was organized at Saint John. That makes it the provincial federation in Canada with the second longest continuous history.

And, finally, this week in 1941 saw the federal government make all strikes in “war industries” illegal. If any worker went on strike contrary to the new regulations, or encouraged or incited others to strike, then they would be liable to a fine of $500 or a year in prison.  Lots did anyway.

This is Derek Blackadder from LabourStart reporting for RadioLabour.

The RadioLabour episode that carried this report can be found at:  https://rabble.ca/podcast/tariffs-unions-and-free-trade-in-north-america/

Top stories on our Canadian French- and English-language pages this week included Labour Day statements from unions, including a particularly good one from NUPGE.  I’m flagging that one because after decades of reading the damn things it isn’t often that I come across one that gets the union juices flowing.

Other stories our volunteers found and posted included a challenging piece from Judy Haiven on the CCU website.  She looks at the positions taken by international unions on the tariff war and concludes that the US sections of those unions are trying to walk a fine line, reflecting memberships that often support the Trump regime’s policies.

My favourite item among our Canadian stories was the news that IAFF local 730 is endorsing candidates in the Victoria municipal election for the first time in its 168-year history.  Though ya gotta wonder what took them so long.

This week’s international story of note came from the European Union.  Workers will demonstrate in Brussels later this month over the ‘EU Inc’ law which risks undercutting national labour rights and starting a race to the bottom across Europe. European unions are calling for real solutions to the problems faced by working people through a strong Quality Jobs Act.

The legislation the labour movement is cranky about would create a parallel EU-wide corporate rulebook which could be used by companies of any size to opt-out of national labour law, collective bargaining structures and worker information, consultation and board-level representation rights.

A corporate exec’s dream in other words.

The reason I selected this international story to summarize today is because next week our federal government is going through an exercise with corporate Canada that promises to produce similar results.

It’s a small world and bad ideas travel real fast.

Over on LabourStart’s Working Women pages stories from Canada included the commitment a newly-elected PSAC leader from Cape Breton has made to find ways to further include indigenous women in the union’s decision-making processes. 

Among the Canadian items appearing on our health and safety page and newswire this week were a really useful, angering and sad piece from The Tyee entitled “Why do workers keep dying on the job?”

We also covered yet another attack on injured workers from the repugnant policy-makers at Ontario’s Workplace Safety and Insurance Board.  I guess that those effers took time away from implementing the AI-induced layoffs of hundreds of frontline WSIB workers to come up with this one.

LabourStart’s Photo of the Week, which you can catch on our main page until Monday, is from the US.  Nurses in California and Nevada will walk out for a day next week in solidarity with striking comrades in Chicago. Other nurses in Chicago and in Maine will be organizing information pickets at their workplace. All are employed by Prime Healthcare, all are concerned that the company puts profits before care. 7 nurses have been suspended for speaking out on behalf of patients.

The United Nurses of Alberta might want to take note and start organizing for their own strike.  UNA has a proud strike history that it might want to consider dusting off as Smith’s medicare machinations continue.

Podcast-wise we’ve recently posted a short, ten minutes or less, interview with Chanyoung Heo.  He is leader of a small union in South Korea that represents workers at Kuehne+Nagel, a German-owned logistics company. 

Listen to the podcast to learn more, including about the company’s new manager, imported from Europe, who told the union that he did not feel bound by a collective bargaining agreement which he did not sign.  Yes, really.  He said that.

And last week our pod dropped an interview with Sean Sweeney, the founder and coordinator of Trade Unions for Energy Democracy, a global network of trade unionists who are trying change the way we deal with the global climate crisis.  Instead of failed neo-liberal solutions, TUED is pushing for ‘public pathways’ to confront the climate emergency.

The labour movement’s history is what our current struggles are built on and this week we marked the anniversaries of these events in Canadian labour history:

This week in 1886 The Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers, Saskatchewan Division No. 322,  formed in Medicine Hat. It is the first union chartered in what later becomes Alberta.

In 1916 a second disaster struck the huge cantilever bridge under construction at Quebec City. Another 13 lives were lost in addition to the 75 deaths in the first collapse in 1907. The bridge, completed in 1917, is still standing today.

And in 1991 more than 100,000 members of the Public Service Alliance of Canada launched a general strike to defend job security for federal public service workers.

LabourStart is also a campaigning website and we currently have four active online solidarity actions, from Türkiye, Taiwan, the Philippines and from Hong Kong.

The latter just went live today at the request of the International Trade Union Confederation, the Building and Wood Workers’ International, the Education International, the International Federation of Journalists and Hong Kong Labour Rights Monitor.

On 21 August 2026 the High Court of Hong Kong convicted Lee Cheuk-yan of incitement to subversion under the National Security Law (NSL). On 11 September, Lee was given a sentence of seven years. Lee is a founder and leader of the Hong Kong Confederation of Trade Unions, the largest independent trade union confederation that was forced to disband under the NSL. His only crime has been his courage. Lee has stood up fearlessly for the rights of working people and for democracy. Our message — the message of millions of trade unionists from around the world — could not be clearer: Free Lee Cheuk-yan now.

Look for the prominent links on our main page and click through.  Protest and solidarity messages are prepped and waiting for you.  It’ll take just seconds to add your voice to those of thousands of trade unionists around the world who have already taken action.

This is Derek Blackadder from LabourStart reporting for RadioLabour.

The RadioLabour episode that carried this report can be found at:  https://rabble.ca/podcast/clc-sets-a-workers-agenda-for-canada/

This week the top stories sections on our Canadian French- and English-language pages included what’s becoming a weekly announcement:  Two more CUPE locals in Nova Scotia’s LTC system have joined the expanding provincial strike.  Over thirty care homes are now behind pickets.

Other stories that caught my eye were the national protests organized by SEIU to draw attention to a cleaning company’s enthusiasm for creating toxic workplaces. 

And while there will be questions about whether it goes far enough and the extent to which all affiliates will participate with enthusiasm, the CLC convention this week “adopted a sweeping action plan to rebuild democratic participation, strengthen working-class political power and confront authoritarian politics.”

But my favourite item among our Canadian stories this week and a candidate for Favourite Labour Story of 2026, was about the delivery drivers in Saskatoon who cut to the chase and skipped the whole ‘sign cards, get a vote, get a union legally certified and go through a few months of bargaining’ stages of building a union and went straight to the picket line.  With reason, given their working conditions and abysmal pay.

As their walkout continues the workers are talking to UFCW about formally organizing, which should be a dawdle.

As LabourStart is a global organization I like to highlight at least one non-Canadian story for you.  This week’s is from Ukraine where the ILO is working with the country’s labour movement to build its capacity despite having to do so in wartime conditions.  Both of Ukraine’s central labour bodies, the Federation of Trade Unions of Ukraine (FPU) and the Confederation of Free Trade Unions of Ukraine (KVPU) are involved.  The program is largely funded by the government of Belgium, thanks to lobbying by Belgian unions.

Over on LabourStart’s Working Women pages stories from Canada included more interviews by the mainstream media by striking Nova Scotia care workers, a collection of first impressions by CUPE members attending the 70th session of the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women, and the struggles of BC women farmworkers for basics like toilets and lunch rooms, not to mention PPE when pesticides are in use.

That same story popped-up on our health and safety page and newswire along with stories about  a Teamster working as a security guard who was shot during a robbery in London Ontario and why retail unions are livid after a shop worker in Winnipeg was assaulted by an irate customer.

LabourStart’s Photo of the Week, which you can catch on our main page until Monday, is a photo of one of the many creative organizing tactics FECUT, the healthcare workers union in Peru has used in its wildly successfully organizing efforts over the last year or two.

This week we did not publish a new podcast..maybe next week.  However the series of interviews with trade union activists and leaders from around the globe remains available.  Just follow the link on our main page.  For better or for worse, almost all of them are as relevant today as they were when recorded.

The labour movement’s history is what inspires our current struggles and this week we marked the anniversaries of these events.  This week has historically been a big one for Canadian workers.

In 1992 an underground explosion took the lives of 26 miners in Pictou County, Nova Scotia. A public inquiry into the Westray Disaster blamed politicians, managers and bureaucrats for creating “a predictable path to disaster.”

In1972 leaders of the Québec Common Front went to jail for defying back to work laws during the April general strike. More than 300,000 workers participated in work stoppages and occupations that brought the provincial government back to the bargaining table.

In 1940 Emma Goldman, the veteran feminist, labour and anarchist organizer, dies in Toronto. A memorial service was held at the Labour Lyceum on Spadina Avenue. She was later buried with the Haymarket martyrs in Chicago.

This week in 1946 saw the start of a six-week strike by loggers in British Columbia, the first after the achievement of collective bargaining rights during the war. The strike helps set postwar standards by achieving higher wages, shorter hours, and an industry-wide contract.

In 1872 some 1500 workers in Hamilton, Ontario took to the streets under the banners of the Nine Hours movement, to demonstrate for a reduction in working hours.

And now the biggie:  This week in 1919 a general strike in a major city brought thousands of workers out in support of labour rights and social change. Winnipeg came to a standstill in an urban rebellion that exposed the unresolved class conflicts of capitalist democracy in Canada.

There are lots more labour history items like this to be found at the bottom of our Canadian news pages. 

This is Derek Blackadder from LabourStart reporting for RadioLabour.

The RadioLabour episode that carried this report can be found at:  https://rabble.ca/podcast/child-care-radiolabour/

This week the top stories sections on our Canadian French- and English-language pages included the lead-up to the CLC convention in Winnipeg, the AFL’s reaction to the voting doxxing scandal in Alberta, and how employers are using AI to disguise call centres.

But my favourite item, among our Canadian stories at least, is going to seem a bit repetitive.  Because it is.

This week two more CUPE locals at LTC facilities in Nova Scotia joined their sisters on the line.  By my count this means the total now is over 30 locals.  Support from the public, from residents and from residents’ families is strong and growing.  The strike hasn’t been won yet but the state of LTC in the province hasn’t received this kind of sustained public attention in a very long time, if ever.

If you want to follow the story more closely just find a item with a highlighted ‘Nova Scotia’ in the lead and click on it.  You’ll be taken to our Nova Scotia union news pages.

As LabourStart is a global organization I like to highlight at least one non-Canadian story for you.  This week I have to mention two good news stories.  The first, from the BWI, that’s the global union federation for construction and building materials workers, brings the news that globally this years International Workers Memorial Day (as the Day of Mourning is known in many places), set new records for the number of events held and the number of workers attending.

The second is the very, very good news that after 17 before the courts, 14 Turkish women union activists have been acquitted of a grab-bag of nonsense criminal charges that boil down to the Turkish government finding women organizing more than a bit scary.

As it should.

The women and their union credit international solidarity and the attention it focussed on their plight for winning them their acquittals.

Think about that for the eight seconds it will take you to join our two active online actions in solidarity with other union activists in Türkiye.  Follow the links for each from our main page.

Speaking of union women, over on LabourStart’s Working Women pages stories from Canada included the heart-warming to labour history buffs news, in the form of a video report from CTV news, that Ontario’s Blyth Festival has begun rehearsals for a play about the Fleck strike. 

The Fleck workers, almost all women, hung in there for five months and won not just their strike but changes to labour laws across the country.  The photo and film records of the walkout are iconic.  80 women facing down five times as many police in riot gear escorting scabs into the plant.  Or trying to.

Sisters of 78 opens on 12 June if you are looking for a reason to visit the Huron Peninsula.  If you have other plans for your summer holidays, spend some time with the strike’s Wikipedia entry.

On our health and safety page and newswire this week was a report from CUPE on the perhaps surprisingly nasty workplace that is the Timmy’s at the Peterborough hospital, and another on what education workers in Saskatchewan are doing to make their workplaces safe.

LabourStart’s Photo of the Week, which you can catch on our main page until Monday, is from Rome.  It is one of dozens we could have run this week as workers flooded streets around the world, just not in Norther America, to mark May Day with demand for economic equality and peace.

The labour movement’s history is what our current struggles are built on and this week we marked the anniversaries of these events:

This week in 1952 more than 1,000 retail employees, most of them women, began a strike at Dupuis Frères, a major department store in Montréal. It took three months, but support for the new militancy among Catholic unions helped the workers win a collective agreement.

In 1887 British Columbia’s worst mine disaster took 150 lives after an explosion in a deep underground mine at Nanaimo. The casualties included 53 Chinese labourers, whose names were not recorded by the company employing them.

And in 1972 Saskatchewan brought in an Occupational Health (and Safety) Act, the first of its kind in North America. It included the right to information about workplace hazards, to participate in safety decisions and the right to refuse unsafe work.

There are lots more labour history items like this to be found at the bottom of our Canadian news pages. 

This is Derek Blackadder from LabourStart reporting for RadioLabour.

The RadioLabour episode that carried this report can be found at:  https://rabble.ca/podcast/1-increase-in-health-care-spending-could-raise-billions/

First of all, May Day greetings to you all.  Look for coverage of celebrations and demonstrations around the world on, where else, LabourStart.

This week the top stories sections on our Canadian French- and English-language pages included May Day greetings from CUPE that hopefully will be joined by statements from other unions as the day goes on, updates on the strike by CUPOE members working at long-term care facilities across Nova Scotia, and reactions by unions and the CLC to the federal budget update.

Other stories included the release of the CCPA’s report on the state of the labour market in Nova Scotia (not good), the ratification of a first contract for Uber drivers in Victoria after a vote by UFCW members, and the coming strike vote by members of the BCNU.

But my favourite item, among our Canadian stories at least, was Unite-HERE local 40’s demo at the FIFA congress in Vancouver during the run-up to the world Cup.  The rally was meant to highlight the growing gap between the billions generated by the global sporting event and the affordability crisis faced by the workers who make these events possible.

As LabourStart is a global organization I like to highlight at least one non-Canadian story for you.  This week’s is from New Zealand where healthcare workers and school staff formed a solidarity chain to mark May Day.  The chain ran across Wellington, from a school to a hospital in an effort to draw attention to the workers affected when the new conservative government killed-off the New Zealand Pay Equity Act, depriving hundreds of thousands of women workers, many of them working in care and education jobs, of a chance for pay equal to that of male workers.

Speaking of women workers, over on LabourStart’s Working Women pages stories from Canada included a WTF story from Nova Scotia (is it just me or is that province often in the labour news these days, and not in a good way) about retro pay calculations for daycare workers.

On our health and safety page and newswire this week were a pile of stories that used the Day of Mourning to highlight ongoing dangers for workers. 

Globally this year’s theme was mental health at work and a highlight for me was a speech by a comrade in Sudbury who spoke at the Day of Mourning event in that Ontario city.  Hip-hop musician and miner Mickey O’Brien shared his story of recovering from addiction and mental health struggles during the Day of Mourning ceremony.  His opening was “I’m lucky I’m still here”.

LabourStart’s Photo of the Week, which you can catch on our main page until Monday, is from Istanbul where this week 15 women leaders of KESK, the Turkish public sector union confederation, were finally acquitted of numerous criminal charges dating back 14 years.  The charges related to such nefarious activities as organizing conferences for women workers and advocating for gender equality.

This week we published a new podcast, an interview with

Stirling Smith, a trade union educator who has worked in many countries, and especially in South Asia. He is active now in the Greater Manchester Hazards Centre and he spoke with our editor Eric Lee about the International Labour Organisation’s estimate that 70% of the world’s workforce is now vulnerable to extreme heat.  Stirling ansewers the questions how is this affecting workers and what can unions do?

The labour movement’s history is what our current struggles are built on and this week we marked the anniversaries of these events:

This week in 1921 the Communist Party of Canada is founded at a three-day meeting in a barn in Guelph, Ontario. The party was to achieve its greatest influence in the 1930s and 1940s organizing unemployed workers and industrial unions, and in struggles against war and fascism.

In 1919 coal miners in Drumheller, Alberta went on strike for recognition of the One Big Union after they vote overwhelmingly to leave the United Mine Workers of America.

Also in 1919 thousands of workers in Calgary and Edmonton go on strike in solidarity with their Winnipeg counterparts.

And in 1927 under pressure from unions, feminists and social reformers, the House of Commons approves a limited old age pension plan.

There are lots more labour history items like this to be found at the bottom of our Canadian news pages. 

And speaking of inspiration, we are currently campaigning on behalf of the recently arrested leadership of the Turkish Shipbuilding and Maritime, Warehousing and Storage Workers’ Union.  Demanding secure employment, a decent living and trade union rights, and opposing unpaid wages, workplace murders and precarity is not a crime unless you live and work in a country like Türkiye.

The union is asking us all, and I do mean all, to send protest messages.  A message is prepped and waiting for you and in seconds you can join the thousands of workers around the world who are demanding an end to union-busting by the Turkish government. 

This is Derek Blackadder from LabourStart reporting for RadioLabour.